Space: Moon Spat

President Kennedy last week treated himself to a two-day tour of key U.S. space installations. It popped his eyes, rattled his ears, and left him obviously inspired—except for a disputatious outbreak of the sort that has been plaguing the nation’s space effort all along.

At Cape Canaveral Kennedy saw the towering, 2,800-ton service structure that will eventually house the Saturn III, the most powerful space vehicle yet off U.S. drawing boards. At the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center at Huntsville, Ala.. Rocket Expert Wernher von Braun gave the President a 30-second static test blast from one of the Saturn booster engines. Von Braun pointed to a huge first-stage booster (prone, but pretty impressive all the same). Said he: “This is the vehicle designed to fulfill your promise to put a man on the moon in this decade.” He paused for a moment, then cried: “And, by God. we’ll do it!” At the St. Louis plant of McDonnell Aircraft Corp., Board Chairman James McDonnell bounced over to the microphone and announced: “This is Mac calling on the team! We have the President of the U.S. with us!” Kennedy hopped aboard an electric cart with McDonnell and chugged through the Mercury capsule assembly lines.

In Houston, where the new Mercury astronaut space center is abuilding, Kennedy got a briefing on orbital and moon-flight tactics from the Mercury astronauts, wound up the Texas phase of his trip with a ringing pep talk to 50.000 people at Rice University Stadium. Said the President: “Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the Industrial Revolution, the first waves of modern invention and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to flounder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it. We have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace . . . We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

“That’s No Good.” But the U.S. race to the moon is still fizzed up by bickering scientists who are still not agreed on the best way to land there. This was made painfully evident in a strange episode that confronted the President at Huntsville.

It began when Kennedy asked Von Braun and his fellow NASA scientists about the relative merits of the moon plans. The NASA program calls for a shot into moon orbit, followed by brief exploration of the moon’s surface by means of a two-man “bug,” after which the explorers will blast back to the orbiting vehicle and return to earth. The alternative, now discarded, called for an earth orbit from which the explorers would shoot directly to the moon. Von Braun & Co. supported the lunar orbit plan. As he spoke, the President’s scientific adviser, Jerome Wiesner, who had advocated the discarded earth-orbit method, muttered, “No, that’s no good.” In full view of newsmen and visitors, including Britain’s Defense Minister Peter Thorneycroft, Wiesner hauled off in sharp attack of the present U.S. plan.

A Little Joke. In the 92° heat, Wiesner perspired passionately as he insisted that the lunar orbit was neither the best nor the safest way to land on the moon. As the argument continued, Kennedy scowled, folded his arms across his chest and said nothing. Vice President Lyndon Johnson hung his head and listened. Thorneycroft seemed embarrassed. NASA Boss James Webb tried to mediate. Wiesner called upon Pentagon Research Director Harold Brown to support his argument. At last the President turned away and cracked a little joke that broke the spat. But as the visitors got into their cars to drive off to their next appointment, Wiesner was still talking.